Luke 1:39 - 45 God Remembers the Forgotten. For Neighborhood Church of Dorchester, Dec 19, 2021. Advent Week 4: Love. Also involving Micah 5:2 - 5.

Luke 2:1 - 20 Why is God’s Love the Baby Jesus? For Neighborhood Church of Dorchester, Dec 18, 2022. Advent Week 4: Love. A creative piece of Mary and Joseph, read aloud as a story.

Luke 3:1 - 20 Get Ready to Meet the King. For Austin Korean Presbyterian Church, Jan 12, 2018. Message 1 of a college group retreat.

Luke 5:1 - 11 Jesus Makes Us Kingdom Builders

Luke 5:12 - 16 The Touch of Jesus

Luke 6:1 - 11 Jesus Completes Us

Luke 6:27 - 36 Jesus' Radical Ethics: Generosity, not Hoarding

Luke 7:1 - 10 The Power of Jesus’ Word

Luke 8:26 - 39 Listening to Too Many Voices

Luke 8:40 - 56 A Tale of Two Daughters

Luke 9:51 - 62 Jesus First! 

Luke 11:1 - 13 The Father's Eagerness to Answer Our Prayers

Luke 11:1 - 13 How the Father Gives. For Boston College Asian Christian Fellowship, Jan 2015. Message 3 for Winter Retreat.

Luke 12:13 - 34 Kingdom Significance, not Security

Luke 13:17 - 21 The Kingdom You No Longer Want (and ppts) (Neighborhood Church of Dorchester, Aug 13, 2017) given one day after the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia

Luke 14:1 - 11 This Party Isn't About You

Luke 14:12 - 14 The Importance of Being Inclusive

Luke 14:15 - 35 The Party You Don't Want to Miss

Luke 15:1 - 10 Rejoicing, not Grumbling, at Outreach

Luke 15:11 - 32 A Tale of Two Sons

Luke 15:11 - 32 How the Father Looks. For Boston College Asian Christian Fellowship, Jan 2015. Message 1 for Winter Retreat.

Luke 19:1 - 10 Racism, Wealth, and Power

Luke 24:13 - 53 Tell the Jesus Story

Acts 3:1 - 10 What To Do With a Harvard Education

Acts 3:11 - 4:12 A Resurrected Jesus in the Midst of Dead Heroes

Acts 10 - 11 The Outreach to the Gentiles Begins

Acts 17:15 - 34 The God People Have Already Experienced

Acts 17:15 - 34 The Engagement of Stories

Acts 17:15 - 34 The Rehumanization of Humanity

Acts 19:1 - 41 The Gospel Divides Ephesus

Thematic Study The Holy Spirit and Speech: Having Something to Say (ppt)

Thematic Study The Theme of Eating: Return to the Banquet Table

Luke 3:1 - 20 Prepare to Meet the King

Luke 3:21 - 4:13 Jesus the New Human Being

Luke 4:14 - 30 The First Synagogue Rejection: Enemies?

Luke 4:31 - 44 The Second Synagogue Rejection: Others?

Luke 4:14 - 44 Two Ways to Reject Jesus

Luke 5:1 - 16 The Two Who Fell at Jesus' Feet

Luke 5:17 - 32 The Two Who Rose at Jesus' Call

Luke 5:27 - 39 The Two Responses to Jesus' Healing Humanity

Luke 6:1 - 11 The Two Signs that Jesus Completes Humanity

Luke 6:12 - 36 Jesus' Definition of Blessedness: Loving Others

Luke 6:37 - 49 Jesus' Definition of Blessedness: Healing, not Judging

Luke 7:1 - 17 The Power of Jesus' Word and the Two Who Escaped Death

Luke 7:18 - 35 Two Responses to Jesus' Kingdom

Luke 7:36 - 50 The Two Party Hosts: Two Responses to Jesus' Forgiveness

Luke 8:1 - 21 What Type of Heart Do You Have?

Luke 8:22 - 25 Jesus Crosses the Sea, Calms the Storm

Luke 8:26 - 39 The Liberation of the Demoniac:  Listening to Too Many Voices

Luke 8:40 - 56 A Tale of Two Daughters

Luke 9:1 - 17 A Taste of Kingdom Mission and Responsibility

Luke 9:18 - 50 Who Do You Say Jesus Is?

Luke 9:51 - 62 Jesus Recruits for the Second Sending

Luke 10:1 - 24 The Mission of the Seventy

Luke 10:25 - 42 Jesus' Redefining of Loving Neighbor, Loving God

Luke 10:25 - 37 Jesus' Path to Eternal Life

Luke 10:38 - 42 A Tale of Two Sisters

Luke 11:1 - 13 The Prayers God Answers, Part 1:  For Others and for the Spirit

Luke 11:14 - 32 How Jesus Authenticates Himself

Luke 11:33 - 54 Jesus Claims Your Whole Person, Inside and Out

Luke 12:1 - 12 The Dangers of Hypocrisy

Luke 12:13 - 34 Jesus' Call to Give Generously

Luke 12:35 - 53 The Coming of the King to His City

Luke 12:54 - 13:9 The City That Resists its King

Luke 13:10 - 35 The Kingdom You No Longer Like, the Capital You'll No Longer Have

Luke 14:1 - 11 Jesus' Vision of the Kingdom Banquet: This Party Isn't About You

Luke 14:12 - 14 Jesus' Vision of the Kingdom Banquet: The Importance of Being Inclusive

Luke 14:15 - 35 Jesus' Vision of the Kingdom Banquet: You Don't Want to Miss this Party

Luke 15:1 - 10 The Two Parables of the Lost Things

Luke 15:11 - 32 The Parable of the Two Lost Sons

Luke 16:1 - 13 How to Use Unrighteous Money: The Servant Jesus Looks For

Luke 16:14 - 31 Rich Man, Poor Man

Luke 17:1 - 10 Jesus' Call to Servanthood

Luke 17:11 - 37 Jesus Predicts the Fall of the Temple

Luke 18:1 - 14 The Prayers God Answers, Part 2: For Vindication and for Humility

Luke 18:15 - 19:10 Rich Man, Rich Man: The Sign of New Birth is Generosity

Luke 19:11 - 27 Jesus' Kingdom Requires Our Investment

Luke 19:28 - 44 The Premature Celebration

Luke 19:45 - 20:19 The Return of the King

Luke 20:20 - 21:4 Jesus Challenged but Triumphant

Luke 21:5 - 38 The Temple's Doom

Luke 22:1 - 30 Jesus Prepares a New Exodus

Luke 22:31 - 24:51 Jesus Divides All Humanity

Luke 22:31 - 62 Seeing Yourself Clearly in the Darkness

Luke 22:63 - 23:25 The Rejection of the King

Luke 23:26 - 24:12 A Light Shines in the Darkness

Luke 24:13 - 53 Tell the Jesus Story!

Thematic Study The Theme of Fire in Luke - Acts

Part 1: Hearing and Speaking: Becoming Servants of the Word

Internalizing Jesus' Word: Forming a Spiritual Identity

The Holy Spirit and Speech: Having Something to Say (and ppts)

The Fulfillment of Israel's Scriptures: Telling the Great Story

The Question of Tongues: Struggling for Coherence

Part 2: Reaching All Humanity Across the Divides: Race, Gender, and Wealth

Table Fellowship: Eating Together and Enacting Jesus' Kingdom

Jews and Abraham’s Family: Choosing the Chosen People

Samaritans: Finding a Home for the Marginalized

Gentiles: Embracing the Outsider Community

Women: Women Restored, Women Restoring

The Poor: More Than Just Preaching to Them

Part 3: Dividing All Humanity: Calling for Repentance

The Theme of Fire in Luke - Acts

From Materialism: Gaining What is Truly Valuable

From Traditional Family Values: New Family, New Allegiance

From Blind Spots: Having True Spiritual Sight

From Ethnocentrism:  Weathering Oppression Without Becoming Ethnocentric

Part 4: Jesus and Other Kings: Confronting the Powers

Jesus is Our True King: Confronting Political Powers

Satan and Spiritual Warfare: Confronting Spiritual Powers

Despite Persecution and Conflict: Enduring Hardship

From Jerusalem Outward: Remembering We Are Not the Center  

The Kingdom of God Revolution Goes Public. Harvard Ichthus, Luke 3:1 - 20. February 15, 2016.

Jesus Tells a Better Story. Harvard Ichthus, Luke 3:21 - 4:13. February 16, 2016.

The Art of Biblical Narrative:  Special Focus on Luke-Acts

An outline drawing from the literary scholarship of Robert Alter and many others. We have the literary skills because we watch modern movies! We distill four techniques into this acronym: TEDS. Themes running through the whole narrative that affect how we integrate one passage into a larger narrative tapestry; Echoes of earlier biblical stories that are asking us to compare the two; Disclosure of detail that affect how we interpret characters; and Structures like chiasms or poetic parallelism which help us identify the point.

The Art of Biblical Narrative:  A Workshop on Luke 5:1 - 16

An exercise of the above document that uses Luke 5:1 - 16 as a workshop, for individuals or groups. Get practice in looking for Themes, Echoes, Disclosure, and Structure.

The Prophecy of Isaiah in Luke - Acts

A table showing how Luke — in both his Gospel and in Acts — draws upon the Prophecy of Isaiah. This includes specific quotations and also allusions.

Luke’s Literary Engagement with the Old Testament: Intertextuality and Lukan Scholarship

Covetousness or Christ at the Heart of an Empire: Desire and Spiritual Formation in Ambrose of Milan’s On Naboth

Slides to a presentation Mako Nagasawa gave to a class at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in February 2024. Here is the link to the Zoom recording of the lecture, and the Zoom password is #i^rZW9^. Here is the English text of the treatise, which Ambrose wrote in 389. Ambrose uses King Ahab as a case study of greed when he seized Naboth’s vineyard, in 1 Kings 21. This presentation relates to the Genesis creation story because Ambrose structures it around Genesis 1. He says that God gave all humans a shared dominion over the creation. In Christ, God gives us dominion, in principle, over sin. Covetousness, therefore, is a double problem. It interferes with the shared dominion over the creation, and it causes us to fail in exercising proper Christ-centered dominion over the sin in ourselves. Ambrose shows that Ahab became cruel, like the wild dogs that eventually fed off his dead, unburied body, as in 2 Peter 2:19 - 22. Ambrose also draws upon Matthew 6:19 - 24 because of how moths and rust share in our physical goods whereas God shares in the development of our moral goodness. Ambrose draws as well on Luke 12:13 - 34 because the greedy tear down barns/granaries and build bigger ones, finding more pleasure in the rising price of grain, not its widespread availability. A few slides refer to Ambrose’s understanding of the human being as a human becoming, Jesus’ work of atonement as a medical substitution healing human nature for us and inviting us to share in him, the pressing issue being human desires and not deservingness per se, and hell as the love of God but experienced by those who have become addicted to sin.

An Exegesis of Luke 16: Literary Analysis and Traditional Exegesis

Jesus Restores Us to Paradise:  Chiastic Outline of Luke 22 - 24

An Analysis of Water Baptism:  Why Water Baptism is Not Necessary for Salvation

An Experiment in Literary Analysis: Paul's Testimony Told Three Times (TBD)

Mako Nagasawa, Debate About Racial Injustice and an Erroneous Interpretation of Luke 16:1 - 13

Facebook post and thread, Sep 23, 2020.

Advent 2021

Podcast conversation for Gospel Reverb | Grace Communion International Equipper, Nov 1, 2021. Covers Luke 3:1 - 6; 3:7 - 18; 1:39 - 45; 2:41 - 52.

Robert Alter and Frank Kermode, The Literary Guide to the Bible. Harvard University Press | Amazon page, Sep 1, 1990. Alter and Kermode edited a collection of articles that has helpful insights into the Gospels.

Robert Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts, Volumes 1 and 2. Fortress Press | Amazon page, Sep 1, 1991. Tannehill gives an excellent literary treatment of Luke that helps with all narrative.

N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God. Fortress Press | Amazon page, Sep 1992. Wright offers valuable historical context, and high level survey of Luke.

Gary Burge, Reading Luke Through Latin-American Eyes. Christianity Today, Apr 16, 2015. Burge interviews church historian Dr. Justo Gonzalez.

Kezia, Alternative Nativity. blog, Dec 21, 2015. Kezia juxtaposes Gospel birth passages with photographs of Syrian refugees; thought provoking.

Christopher M. Hays, Renouncing Everything: Money and Discipleship in Luke. Paulist Press | Amazon page, Nov 2016. This book is Hays’ layperson’s version of his dissertation. For the more scholarly version, see Christopher M. Hays, Luke’s Wealth Ethics: A Study in Their Coherence and Character. Dissertation | Mohr Siebeck | Amazon page, Dec 2010.

Stephen de Young, The Two Lukes. The Whole Counsel of God, Mar 31, 2021. On the “Western” and the “Alexandrian” manuscripts of the Gospel of Luke.

Stephen de Young, Two Lukes Two. The Whole Counsel of God, Apr 5, 2021. Discusses three of the most interesting textual variations.

Jonathan Pageau, Transfiguration: The End of Symbolism - with Aidan Hart. Jonathan Pageau, Aug 3, 2023. A 53 minute video discussion. “This is a discussion from the Princeton Scala Foundation conference that took place in April 2023 with the title, “The Transfiguration: Glory and Grace in the World”. I sat down with Margarita Mooney Clayton and iconographer and author Aidan Hart to discuss the Transfiguration of Christ, how God's glory fills the world, and that the ultimate goal of the spiritual life is encountering God face to face.”